Images and video taken from modern digital camera and video recording devices can be generated and stored in a variety of different formats and types. For example, digital cameras may capture dimensional (2D) images and store them in a vast array of data formats, including, for example, JPEG (Joint Phonographic Experts Group), TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), BMP (Windows Bitmap), or GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). Digital videos typically have their own formats and types, including, for example, FLV (Flash Video), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), MOV (QuickTime Format), WMV (Windows Media Video), and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group).
These 2D formats are typically based on rasterized image data captured by the camera or recording device where the rasterized image data is typically generated and stored to produce a rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a computer screen, paper, or other display medium. Other 2D formats may also be based on, for example, vector graphics. Vector graphics may use polygons, control points or nodes to produce images on a computer screen, for example, where the points and nodes can define a position on x and y axes of a display screen. The images may be produced by drawing curves or paths from the positions and assigning various attributes, including such values as stroke color, shape, curve, thickness, and fill.
Other file formats can store 3D data. For example, the PLY (Polygon File Format) format can store data including a description of a 3D object as a list of nominally flat polygons, with related points or coordinates in 3D space, along with a variety of properties, including color and transparency, surface normal, texture coordinates and data confidence values. A PLY file can include large number of points to describe a 3D object. A complex 3D object can require thousands or tens-of-thousands of 3D points in a PLY file to describe the object.
A problem exists with the amount of different file formats and image types. Specifically, while the use, functionality, and underlying data structures of the various image and video formats are typically transparent to a common consumer, the differences in the compatibility of the various formats and types creates a problem for computer systems or other electronic devices that need to analyze or otherwise coordinate the various differences among the competing formats and types for specific applications. This issue is exacerbated because different manufacturers of the camera and/or video devices use different types or formats of image and video files. This combination of available different file formats and types, together with various manufacturer's decisions to use differing file formats and types, creates a vast set of disparate image and video files and data that are incompatible and difficult to interoperate for specific applications.